The data is getting a bit old (and I could improve a lot nowadays), but the same trends are present within Metro Vancouver.

This is the way. Once single stair is legalized for part 9 buildings, these could also be 3 floors

Stop spacing is one of those things that most people don't think about. I probably think about it too much. This graph shows how totally out of whack Canadian stop spacing is compared to the places where transit is widely used. People like transit with wider stop spacing.

Building on this, is there a reason there aren't more culturally and regionally diverse voices in the planning profession? Especially those who can bring lived experience and not just surface-level impressions from abroad.

This point goes severely under-discussed in talking about the housing crisis. I've also been forced to live in moldy substandard housing. It's tempting to keep piling "nice to haves" on to new housing, but when it reduces the amount of new housing we get, many suffer in old, often dangerous, housing

This should lay to rest the idea that "gentle density" will solve anti-housing backlash. Calgary legalized multiplexes (2 storeys, 60% lot coverage) by right and still faced the same headwinds. We won't get homes built by pre-emptively watering down housing reforms, so let's aim higher in Vancouver.

It's important to recognize the Waterfront East LRT is estimated to cost nearly 2x more than any Metrolinx LRT project. At 800million/km it's more comparable in price to Metrolinx subway projects. This could very well be the most expensive LRT project in the world. www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...

Next stage: Enlightened planner: what if we identify and resolve the reasons for unreasonable cost escalation in transit projects instead of treating them as an inevitable part of big infrastructure projects?

If we're trying to mitigate the cost of living impacts of this war, it seems like the right move is to improve transit so that people aren't forced to go into ruinous debt just to get to work. So that they have an alternative that's decent.

Buses are leaving people behind at Swartz Bay, forcing them to either take the milk run 72, wait for the next sailing's 70's (competing with the next ferry's passengers), or take a cab/Uber. This is the consequence of transit budget cuts that directly impact transit's ability to meet demand.

The opposition groups got a surprise: Their own polling found that a large majority of Canadian support building High Speed Rail. www.railfans.ca/article/cana...

Permissive movements like right on red and permissive left turns also require the signal to he operating inefficiently to take advantage of the gaps in traffic. I've performed some observations and often the time savings is overstated. Especially a signals operating in free mode.

Everyone knows that some neighbourhoods are full of mansions for rich people. But few realize that we have laws that artificially reduce the price of those mansions for those rich people. We could change those laws, opening up a bunch of discount land to apartments.

17,000 Chinese labourers were recruited, largely under indentured-like contracts, to build the western section of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) through British Columbia. Facing dangerous, low-paid work, over 2,000 died from accidents, malnutrition, and disease.

Oak Bay's new OCP in a nutshell: The province is forcing us to update the OCP to accommodate 20 years of housing need (3,761 new homes). We hope that UVic will build 90% of those homes for us far away from the actual town Hard to call that a plan.

Research shows that the number one thing that central municipalities can do to drive down carbon emissions is build a lot of multifamily housing in walkable areas to allow people to live low-carbon lifestyles. But I've never seen a municipal climate plan that even mentions this as a goal

Given our geography, I could see this happening in parts of #yyj as well! Food for thought: Downtown Victoria already has more parkades than Groningen had when its circulation plan was put in place.

cowichanvalleycitizen.com/2026/03/26/b... The Province is building a new hospital (good), but has denied transit any expansion funding to service said hospital (bad). As a result, staff has now been directed to explore *stealing* resources from other routes to service this new hospital (very bad).

Note that this isn't just stopping expansion, but forcing future cuts because the cost to operate transit increases year over year!

Huge thanks to the operators, mechanics, cleaners, dispatchers, and all the workers who keep Greater Victoria moving every day. Your care, patience, and professionalism make our community stronger. If you’re riding today, share a smile or a quick thank you. #ThanksTransit #YYJ

Transit ridership in the Paris region is now 5% higher than it was in the pre-Covid period, as car traffic along the Paris ring highway & within the center city is 15 to 20% lower than pre-Covid. www.institutparisregion.fr/mobilite-et-...

Also Switzerland: buses can turn left from the right-turn lane, effectively using it as a queue-jump lane, because our actuated and adaptive traffic light will take care of emptying it before the bus arrive.

I don't disagree, but there's a prevalent issue that EV's are seen as an excuse to *not* invest in transit. We have the FVRD putting forward a mobility plan 100% focused on EV's, while refusing expansion for a bus that has been so overcrowded it's *profiting*. haveyoursay.fvrd.ca/zero-emissio...

This NACTO/USDOT report addresses how to downsize fire trucks in cities. nacto.org/wp-content/u...

Pedestrian Observations: Why Building Metros is Necessary for the Green Transition Away from Cars pedestrianobservations.com/2026/03/10/w...

sometimes a graph speaks for itself

Today is probably the first time I feel this thing is not that far away from being ready for prime time. Still a lot of work, but I hope we can have this online by the end of April 🤞🤞🤞

Putting busways on existing streets are among most cost effective projects. 20% speed improvement = 20% ops savings or 20% frequency improvement at no ops cost. They're like printing cash

I wrote another blog post! This one's a short one about REITs and their relationship with new housing supply. www.jacksandor.ca/blog/what-re...

I’ve brought up transit cost escalation with some politicians and they’re generally just not aware it’s happening at all. Especially provincial/federal ones. More aware are municipal politicians who follow transit and read people like Reece or Alon.

"A final *year* of debate and planning was required to raise the number of floors for the school for 3 to 4." This is in an elementary school next door to downtown Vancouver.

Nice video with aerial footage of Lyon's new T6 extension that clearly shows two key ingredients of French trams that make it difficult to replicate them here, unless we change the way we design streets: - accepting an extremely narrow single-lane street - accepting bending youtu.be/RMxHZDGYGc4?...

Another new paper on housebuilding and vacancy chains, this time with data on every Swiss resident & housing unit! An interesting context given Switzerland's high immigration, very large rented sector and strong tenancy rent controls... frederickluser.github.io/files/Moving...

Anyone who says we don’t need zoning reform because we should just build subsidized housing should go watch a public hearing on any proposed project. Edmonton city council just wasted an entire day over adding 30 affordable units.

BCT had requested a 15k hour expansion for Vic to *maintain* service levels due to increasing congestion. In denying expansion, and actually cutting, the province has made clear that Transit isn't a core service and that they are fine with seeing service quality degrade. So much for Climate goals.

We are standing with groups across the province to fight for better transit in BC, including @movementyvr.bsky.social, @climatejusticeyyj.bsky.social , the West Coast Climate Action Network, and @bcruralhealth.bsky.social. Consider getting involved! bettertransityyj.ca/join-better-...

If you or people you know take transit in BC (especially in #yyj), this is going to hurt. We need to get the word out and put the pressure on about how important expansion, not stagnation (i.e. less service over time) is!

This is especially disappointing after seeing Squamish featured as part of @bcpolicy.bsky.social's great seminar on housing policy.

Our latest newsletter is out! mailchi.mp/a43ac17f9af1... As a highlight, we now have our membership structure set up! You can sign up to become a member at bettertransityyj.ca/membership/

Interesting point about value engineering

There's a lot BC can learn from in this excellent report. Perhaps most directly relevant for #yyj : we need to plan transit around our goals as a region, not around ideology. Also, we need to empower at least one set of decision-makers to actually build what we need as a region.

Very happy to have collaborated with CSA Group on this report examining successes and challenges in transit project construction in Canada and the lessons we can learn for future projects. www.csagroup.org/article/publ...

Every few months we get someone new to the housing discourse misinterpret some statistics and get mislead into believing it's not a housing shortage. Fortunately that idea falls apart simply by asking why some markets seem to be immune to financialization. www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...

Are "pre-rebuttals" a thing, like "pre-zonings"? If so, here's a pre-rebuttal from @jensvb.bsky.social and I to the latest argument that supply doesn't matter (from CCPA, sigh). The Key: Doubling up is the demographic indicator demonstrating our shortage. homefreesociology.com/2025/07/06/h...

Agree, I would worry for a left that doesn't recognize how critical the shortage of homes is to the crisis. The supply shortage isn't the only thing, but it's a fundamental driver. Tried to synthesize some of the evidence for a progressive audience here: bcpolicy.ca/2025/12/16/h...

The crisis is a shortage of housing. This is crystal clear in the data; rents go up when there are fewer empty homes on the market, and rents go down when landlords can’t find tenants for their rentals.

BC Transit is looking for your input on service to the airport. Take the survey, or chat with them in person. We encourage you to tell transit to fix overcrowding and improve frequencies on important routes before investing into airport service. #yyj #bctransit engage.bctransit.com/victoria-air...

Should be an uncontroversial win for affordability 🙏 saanichnews.com/2026/02/01/s...

Doing the good work. We also are spinning up a little group to advocate for changes @fasttracktoronto.bsky.social

It's really crazy travelling Europe and realising how much more advanced the signal and track infra is on their streetcars vs ours. No, Boston and SF are not good examples of streetcar infra. I'm glad someone is finally able to delegate to our officials what Europe has had for decades.